Martin v. United States – Fighting to preserve federal officer accountability for constitutional violations

Curtrina Martin and her partner were injured and terrorized during a violent pre-dawn FBI raid on their suburban Atlanta home in 2017, all because the FBI agents went to the wrong address. Fifty years ago, in response to similar wrong-house raids, Congress enacted the "law-enforcement proviso" in the Federal Tort Claims Act (“FTCA”). That provision, which enables people to sue the government for "assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, abuse of process, or malicious prosecution" by "investigative or law enforcement officers of the United States Government," ensures that people like Ms. Martin have can go to court to seek a remedy for the harms the government inflicted on them.

After the trial and appellate courts held that Ms. Martin's case could not proceed, the Supreme Court agreed to review it to consider the proper reading of the "law-enforcement proviso," which is a critical tool for holding the federal government accountable when federal officers injure people through unconstitutional physical force or arrests.

Together with the National ACLU, the ACLU of Georgia, Public Accountability, and the Cato Institute, we filed an amicus brief to argue that "law-enforcement proviso" claims cannot be defeated by the government's argument that officials were acting in an area in which they had "discretion." We explain why the government's argument fails both as a matter of statutory interpretation and because the government never has "discretion" to commit a constitutional violation. Further, we argue that the Court should not accept the government's proposal to import into the FTCA a version of "qualified immunity" — the problematic rule (which we have opposed in a number of other cases) that officers' actions cannot result in liability unless their actions were not just unconstitutional but in violation of "clearly established" law. This unnecessarily high barrier to holding officials accountable dilutes the force of constitutional rights and has no basis in text, history, or policy.

The Supreme Court ruled in June 2025. Ruling in favor of Ms. Martin, the Court overturned a plaintiff-unfriendly rule from the lower court that the United States could invoke the Supremacy Clause to defend against FTCA actions. The Court also held, contrary to our view, that the discretionary function exception can apply to FTCA claims advanced under the law enforcement proviso. However, the Court left open the possibility — which we had urged, and which most federal courts agree with us about — that the discretionary function exception can be defeated by a showing that the conduct at issue was unconstitutional. The Court did not rule on whether a qualified immunity-like protection might apply. Ms. Martin will now have the chance to continue to press her claim in the lower courts.